Skip to main content
Main

Stewed Ox-tails

A slow‑cooked stew of ox‑tails with onions, carrots, parsley, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Stewed Ox-tails

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak and wash the ox-tails well, then cut them into joints or lengths of 2 or 3 joints.

  2. Cover the ox-tails with cold broth or water and bring to a boil.

  3. Remove the scum, then add salt, pepper, onion, carrots, and parsley.

Simmer and serve

  1. Simmer for 2 hours and 15 minutes, checking for tenderness.

  2. If not tender, continue simmering until fully cooked.

  3. Serve with the vegetables or strain the gravy and thicken it.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Ox-tails
Collagen in the connective tissue breaks down during long simmering, giving the meat its tender texture and body.
Onion
Adds savory aroma and sweetness to the broth as it simmers with the meat.
Carrots
Contribute natural sweetness and body to the stew and gravy.

The step that matters

Keep the simmer gentle and check for tenderness. Boiling hard toughens meat proteins and can break the fat into the liquid, leaving the gravy cloudy and greasy. A slow, steady simmer lets collagen soften gradually, so the meat becomes tender without falling apart. Test before deciding it is done.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, clove, carrot, parsley):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, clove, carrot, parsley. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

You might also like

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes